Blount, Martin Put Cincinnati Back on Map

Corie Blount and Erik Martin, the Dons of Dunk, were hovering above the rim one night last March, occupying their customary air space, when a voice rang out in the crowd.

“Are they signed?” Rick Pitino wanted to know.

It was late in the recruiting season--the evening of the 1991 California State community college championship final, to be exact--but it never hurts to ask, or so Pitino thought.

“Yeah,” someone told the University of Kentucky basketball coach. “Right up the road from you.

“Cincinnati.”

Pitino shook his head and became, perhaps, the first man in America to ask what would become the most-asked question on the road to the 1992 Final Four.

Cincinnati?

Blount and Martin had used similar punctuation when Bearcat Coach Bob Huggins and his band of bush-beating recruiters arrived at the doorsteps of Rancho Santiago Community College in Santa Ana.

“I figured it was just another school,” Martin says with a shrug. And what did he know about University of Cincinnati Bearcat basketball?

“Oscar Robertson” topped Martin’s list.

And: “They won a few titles a long time ago.”

And . . .

“Besides that, nothing really.”

Blount had done a little more research, enough to know that Cincinnati had no center for the 1991-92 season, which was really all the 6-foot-10 Blount had to know.

“I pretty much knew I was going to come in and start right away,” Blount says. “They wanted a JC center, someone who could step right in and play.

“They told me they had a pretty good team already and my impact could make a difference. That basically did it for me.”

Repeat the process seven times over and you have the equation that landed Cincinnati in the Final Four for the first time since 1963. You can’t win in big-time college basketball with JC kids? Cincinnati has eight of them on its current roster--and 29 victories on its current ledger.

Blount and Martin were just part of the groundswell, but at Rancho Santiago they comprised a very visible target. In front of Pitino’s eyes, Blount and Martin directed Rancho Santiago to its second State title in two years and 67th victory in 72 attempts. That night, the Dons defeated Long Beach City College, a team with another future Bearcat, 6-5 forward Terry Nelson, in its lineup.

They called it the 1991 California State final, but it was really the first Cincinnati intrasquad practice of the 1991-92 season.

“The California Connection,” Blount says with a grin. “A lot’s been made of that this year. Everybody was saying that we were coming in to change things here.

“I guess you could say we did.”

A lot has been made, too, of today’s first semifinal game at the Metrodome: Michigan’s fabulous freshmen against Cincinnati’s quick-fix transfers. The right way versus the renegades.

Huggins bristles at the suggestion that Michigan somehow took a higher road to get here.

“Very few people understand our situation,” says Huggins, a coach who inherited NCAA sanctions (including an eight-scholarship limit) when he was hired by Cincinnati in 1989. Now, with a full complement of 15 scholarships to use, and a roster to fill, Huggins says, “I don’t know how smart it would have been to recruit eight freshmen and then add seven more the next year. You would not be able to keep anyone happy.

“It was necessary to recruit JC players to spread out the classes. Guys end up in JCs for different reasons. Some, like Blount, mature late. Others are multiple transfers. I think people need to look deeper at why people go to junior college and don’t hold it against them for taking that path.”

Says Blount: “I think it’s been overblown. We have five transfers starting, but if nobody had been any good, no one would have heard about it. Now that we’ve won some big games, you hear, ‘Oh, he’s got a lot of JC players.’ ”

In Cincinnati, the Bearcats’ run has “been hyped pretty good,” according to Blount, but it’s nothing new to the center. At Rancho, Blount started for teams that finished 32-3 and 35-2. Throw in Cincinnati’s current 29-4 showing and that’s a three-year mark of 96-9.

Blount has started all but one of Cincinnati’s games this season, averaging 8.4 points and 6.3 rebounds. Martin, in the sixth man’s role, is averaging 6.2 points and 3.8 rebounds.

The Final Four is a long way from those “crowds” of 200 close friends and family members inside the Rancho gymnasium--or is it just a stepping stone? “Last year, Alonzo was here,” says Martin, alluding to Kansas forward Alonzo Jamison, another former Don. “Coach (Dana) Pagett must be doing something right.”

If that’s the beginning of one tradition, Martin says he’d like to continue another. Brushing up on Cincinnati basketball history, Martin discovered that “the last time Cincinnati won the championship (1962), they beat Ohio State, which was then the reigning champion.”

If Cincinnati ’92 retraces that tour de force, Martin figures, it will be at the probable expense of Duke, the reigning champion.

“So,” he says with a glint in his eye, “maybe we’ve got that in our corner.”

The Bearcats need something. With Duke the favorite, Indiana always dangerous with whatever’s rattling inside Bob Knight’s cranium and Michigan loaded to the gills with prep All-Americans, Cincinnati is already getting the thanks-for-coming treatment.

“We’re the underdogs again,” Martin sighs. “We hear, ‘You guys don’t have a chance, you’re this, you’re that, Michigan has the Fab Five.’ Man, I’d like to receive (some good publicity). I mean, damn, we’re in the Final Four.”

Quick fix? If Martin and Blount and the rest of Cincinnati’s juco all-stars ever wanted to play to the stereotype, they’ve never had a better opportunity than today.